By Cyrisse Jaffee

Enjoy an instant classic for kids and an established classic that is newly available.

Oh Dear, Look What I Got! by Michael Rosen. Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. Walker Books, 2025.

The Very Fine Clock by Muriel Spark. Drawings by Edward Gorey. Transit Children’s Editions, 1968 (reissued in 2025).

The familiar—and much beloved—team who gave us I’m Going on a Bear Hunt offer what will surely become another preschool classic. Like their previous volume, the new book, Oh Dear, Look What I Got! is a silly, cumulative tale that invites participation from its audience.

A little boy begins his tale with this sentence: “I went to the shop to get me a carrot.” (Yes, some will cringe to hear that extraneous “me,” but it gives the statement a folksy feel.) In each store, he is given the wrong item, an animal that just happens to rhyme with his original request—a parrot instead of a carrot, a cat instead of a hat, a goat instead of a coat, and so on. By the end, he has a menagerie that creates havoc, but a knock at the door saves the day: the shop owners are lined up to give him back his original purchases and a rollicking party ensues.

The simple rhyming words and narrative are perfectly animated by Helen Oxenbury’s wonderful-as-always illustrations. At 87, she has lost none of her talent and skill in capturing both animals and humans with a blend of realism and comedy. Her distinctive style combines lovely details with an array of diverse and endearing characters, plus a sense of movement that helps the action leap off the page. Michael Rosen, who has written more than 200 kids’ books, is also known for his sensitivity and humor. Together, this British team had managed once again to create a timeless tale that will entertain kids and grown-ups for years to come.

A page from Muriel Spark and Edward Gorey’s The Very Fine Clock.

Another team, known primarily for their work for grown-ups, also provides a tale which has stood the test of time and—pun intended— it’s about a clock! The Very Fine Clock is Muriel Spark’s only book for kids. Accompanied by Edward Gorey’s marvelous drawings, the reissue may delight mostly grown-ups, but it’s never too early to introduce kids to this curious tale.

A clock named Ticky, originally from Switzerland, lives in a house with his friend, Professor Horace John Morris. Every night “at fourteen minutes past ten, when Professor John had finished writing at his desk,” Spark tells us, “he would come and wind up Ticky and listen to hear if Ticky’s heart was still beating well.” (Children who are unfamiliar with wind-up analog clocks and watches may need a little tutorial.) Every Thursday night, four professor friends come to visit—dressed, as per Gorey’s style, in a variety of vaguely Edwardian outfits. They tell Ticky that they’d like to make him a professor, too, because, as they inform him, “you can tell the exact time without looking at a clock.”

Ticky politely refuses, explaining that when the house is quiet, he communicates with the other clocks in the house: “Upstairs and downstairs, we give out our tick-tock messages, some in a breathless hurry and some in a shy tremble.” If Ticky became a professor, he would no longer be able to talk to his other clock friends, since they would “think I had become too grand for them.”

The story ends on a properly odd note—Ticky “muses” to himself that Pepita, the clock in the spare room that he especially likes, could not even say the word “professor” and knows only how to say, “Ticky, Ticky, Ticky.”

Although one could point to themes of friendship, loyalty, humility — and perhaps class? — the charm of the story is in Gorey’s memorable illustrations, which are a little less macabre than usual, as well as Spark’s literary style. It’s an intriguing book that will appeal to a discerning child and, better yet, can introduce all kids to the artistry of Edward Gorey.

Cyrisse Jaffee is a former children’s and YA librarian, children’s book editor, and a creator of educational materials for WGBH. She holds a master’s degree in Library Science from Simmons College and lives in Newton, MA.